Masks are still mandated in several settings across Ireland despite the broad lifting of Covid restrictions a fortnight ago.
People must still wear face coverings on public transport, in shops and in healthcare settings.
Given the improved trajectory of Covid-19 here, thoughts are turning as to how the country will continue to adapt to living with the virus.
NPHET will meet again on February 17 to consider the public health measures, with mask-wearing in the required settings currently regulated until the end of the month.
Ireland's reopening has gone well with hospitalisations and ICU admissions down, although a lot remains to be seen in terms of how the virus progresses in the coming months.
That is according to Professor Sam McConkey, an expert in infectious diseases at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin.
"There's a lot of uncertainty still," he told the Irish Mirror.
"Obviously we in Ireland are in a happy place right now but when you look around the world at the US, or the UK, or Israel and Germany and several other countries, they're still really struggling with Coivd as a population public health problem with lots of hospitalisations, lots of people in ICUs and unfortunately lots of deaths for them.
"It's still a bit of a problem in the world and I know because we've had a bit of an opening up two weeks, we think this problem is gone and we're on to new problems, but unfortunately it is still there around the world.
"Unfortunately for individuals here in Ireland who are unvaccinated or who don't have a good immune system, they are still getting sick with it."
Despite this, he is "happy" that things "seem to be going OK" since Ireland reopened last month.
"So far, so good," he said.
"We've all learned so much over the last two years about how to avoid catching respiratory viruses...people are still sensibly cautious in a widespread way so I think it's been a sigh of relief that we are as a nation doing OK through this so far.
"But will there be another wave of some horrible new variant in six months? I hope not.
"It isn't going to go away completely but I'm hoping it will get much less severe."
Prof McConkey believes that we will likely be wearing masks in a number of key settings for a while yet and that Ireland is unlikely to follow the lead of places like the UK where masks are largely not required on public transport or in shops.
"I feel like those of us working in the healthcare industry where we're surrounded by vulnerable, at-risk patients, will continue to wear masks for the foreseeable future," he said.
"That's the whole healthcare industry which is maybe 7 or 8% of the workforce.
"Then I see places like supermarkets which are, as we all know, necessary to our survival, we can't live without eating or shopping.
"There are vulnerable people with cancer or transplants or whatever who have to go in and buy their shopping.
"In those areas, I feel like the rest of us should, and I hope have to, continue to wear masks in those what I would call necessary public activities like public transport and shopping to protect the minority who are at risk or vulnerable or even unvaccinated from us potentially shedding coronavirus on to them.
"I feel like most of us have got used to that so I do see that going on for quite a while.
As for schools, these are essential and everyone should be doing what they can to keep kids in classrooms, he said.
"If that involves children wearing masks or some of us wearing masks to protect particularly the vulnerable children in school, then that may be something that is needed in the future as well," he explained.
"I could see some of those [mask requirements] continuing on for quite a while, it's obviously government public policy and our Department of Health has to advise the Cabinet and the Cabinet has to make a decision on those rules.
He added: "I don't think we should use the UK as our role model here.
"They've a lot of deaths in the UK, the UK hasn't come out of this very well, there are still a lot of healthcare problems there and their healthcare system is still tottering."
When it comes to whether we might have to don facemasks every winter when respiratory illnesses such as the flu typically arise, Prof McConkey said it is "too early to say".
"We don't know enough yet about the behaviour of Covid-19, it's not reaching the pattern of a stable winter outbreak yet like flu so we don't know that it has that predictable period every winter yet," he said.
